Not Feeling Much Like Celebrating the Nation

But Taking the Week Off Anyhow

Like many Americans, I’m taking this holiday week off to rest, regroup, and spend some quality time in traffic on I-95. I admit, however, that I’m not feeling much like celebrating the nation’s independence right now.

To finish out its term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness, told colleges that their practice of including race as a factor in admissions was unconstitutional, and agreed with a web designer that forcing her to make wedding websites for gay couples would violate her free speech rights. I’m not going to pretend to be a legal scholar on any of these issues, but as a semi-informed human I will just say WTF.

Roberts’s decision on affirmative action argued that “universities have…concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.” Maybe he doesn’t have a rising high school senior at home, but I can tell him that the admission process is not an equal contest based on challenges, skills, or lessons. It’s a game that people are winning based on money (read private schools, SAT tutors, and independent college counselors) and social status (read who you know and where you parents and grandparents went to college). And, whether the Chief Justice likes it or not, money and status remain inextricably tied to skin color.  

In her dissent Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote:

With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.

As for the website case, we have to understand that gay couples weren’t clamoring for this random homophobic woman’s design services. In fact, one of the people cited in her complaint as a someone she shouldn’t have to work with has said he never inquired about her services and has been happily married to a woman for 15 years.

This was a test case based on her desire to state publicly on her website that gay people were bad or at least that she didn’t want to make them pretty HTML pages that told their friends what time the ceremony started or where the couple had registered for flatware. She could easily have sat back at home not making websites for the same-sex couples who didn’t ask or even declining to work with the ones who did. Excuses like “I’m booked until the fall,” “Sure, but my going rate is $7 zillion dollars,” or even “I’m sorry but I don’t do rainbow anything” would have sufficed.

Instead, she decided to take her gay hatred out for a spin and start preemptively whining to test Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws. Two lower courts sided with the state, but this Supreme Court bought her “I’m a white Evangelical woman so clearly I’m the one who is oppressed” argument and ruled that her free speech rights would be violated if she had to work with a gay couple. That’s not how it f**king works, or it wasn’t until now.

So instead of watching the Boston Pops or reading the news, I’m going to spend this vacation week watching Wimbledon and looking at the undershorts of the female players. It’s not creepy, it’s progress that only took 139 years.

Wimbledon is the last of the majors to require that players wear all white on the court. Cream, off-white, and ecru are not allowed, though players may have a “single trim color” at the edge of the neck or sleeve provided that it is no more than a centimeter wide.

Female players have noted that this dress code adds stress if the two-week tournament happens to fall at the same time as their period. We can debate wearing white after Labor Day, but few people wear it during menstruation for obvious reasons. Tournament leaders finally listened; starting this year, players will be able to “wear solid, mid/dark-coloured undershorts provided they are no longer than their shorts or skirt.”

Wimbledon is an international event, and worldwide there are over 5,000 euphemisms for saying you have your period. The British talk about Aunt Flo (which is kind of obvious) and also Aunt Irma (which is not). In Germany, it’s erdbeerwoche (strawberry week) while the Russians go with Критические дни meaning “critical days.” Apparently, the French call it “Le petit clown qui saigne du nez” or “the little clown with a nose bleeding,” but that sounds like something one French person said once.

Whatever they call it, I hope any players who have to deal with their periods while also facing an opponent’s 105 mph serve, are just a little more comfortable this year.